Another [censored] Petition Against Violent Idiocy and Irresponsibility

I curse, and I weep. Three months ago, I wrote:

Three months ago, I wrote about this happening: Iraqi intellectuals and experts being killed or intimidated. It's still going on, though the scale may not be what was originally reported. We have made little or no progress in creating order or security and that we're going to be handing Iraq back to a society whose best-educated and most productive professionals have been systematically killed or driven away or intimidated into silence. I don't know what the solution is. I do know that we should have done something about it in the interim, and we haven't.

Now, via HNN's Breaking News comes a petition calling for action by occupying powers to halt the assassination of academics. According to the petition, over 250 college professors have been killed in fifteen months: that's the equivalent of the teaching staff of both schools I've taught at being wiped out in three semesters and a summer break. While we can quibble over who really is responsible now, the bulk of the killings took place when we were the unquestioned authority in Iraq, and our failure to safeguard civilians against a targeted campaign of violence is cause for remorse and recrimination.

Yes, I take it seriously because I'm an academic, too. I take it seriously because I believe in education, and I believe in a healthy civil society as the foundation for a decent and prosperous society. I take it seriously because anyone who targets civilian educators clearly will kill anyone, and wants nothing but miserable servitude for the people. I take it seriously because even if the assassinations are stopped now there will still be a generation of students deprived of dedicated and competent teachers, and if they aren't stopped then it just gets worse and worse. I don't care if you're an academic or not, if you want Iraq to be a stable, even democratic, society someday soon, you should be pushing your government to push every government it has any influence with to do something about this.

A petition isn't much. But it's something: add your name, even if, like me, you're not sure about the organization's greater goals. Three blog posts isn't much. But it's something. What else can we do? (No, this isn't a lament; it's a call for suggestions!)